


when stern Hades heard Orpheus

by unreadlibrary



Category: Persona 3
Genre: F/M, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Post-Game Kinda, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 07:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11435601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreadlibrary/pseuds/unreadlibrary
Summary: "When stern Hades heard Orpheus’s song, he began to weep."





	when stern Hades heard Orpheus

 -

_When stern Hades heard Orpheus' song, he began to weep._

-  
It was the type of room depicted in heavens or hospitals. She stood in the middle, concentrating on only small and physical facts, like the cold tile under bare feet. She took note of the empty but disheveled bed, looked between the mirror and the hazy window. She chose the mirror.  
  
She had plucked her eyebrows that night, October 2nd. It was the little things she remembered first. October, walking back from school. Her stomach had been pleasantly weightless that day. She dreaded coming home. It took her almost an hour just to pluck her eyebrows.   
  
His key had turned in the lock. She had already been sitting on the couch in the dorm, head of the dog in her lap for comfort but she barely noticed. Now all her courage melted down her spine and she knew she should turn around now and say something or five seconds would pass and she’d lose him.  
  
She had never questioned how she’d known. He’d known it, too. Already as she got up and turned toward him his steps were slanted away and there was regret in his eyes. He wasn’t going to stick around forever.  
  
It was this, this very grown-up silence between them, that steeled her resolve.   
  
“Shinjiro,” she had said, somewhat stiffly.  
  
“Sup,” He’d be sociable enough for that, then turn and walk up the stairs. She planted her feet firmly, sending a message. He heeded.  
  
It was silent. Wasn’t there anyone else at home? It was almost perfect, except it wasn’t.  
  
“You can stare at me like that all day,” he said, too tired to be anything but transparent, “I got nothing for you,”  
  
In her mind, it had been much more indirect. She was going to reference some quality of his that she admired—it was going to be watered down and vaguely poetic.  
  
“Haven’t you wasted enough time on me already? What more do you want?” he asked.  
  
In practice, she was braver than she had expected. She loved him, after all.   
  
He bit his tongue. She had just given him permission to crush her into the ground and cover her up so she’d never see the light of day again. Her heart was beating wildly.  
  
He lost control of his voice—“Don’t tease me like that!”  
  
The relief she felt came out in a hiccup of a laugh. “You don’t believe me?”  
  
“I mean, why just blurt out something like that? Here, of all places?”  
  
She looked down now. She asked that stupid question, feeling completely stupid, knowing she was completely stupid.  
  
“What?”  
  
She looked up at him, wincing.  
  
He managed something like, “You moron!”  
  
Now she laughed, nervous and genuine.  
  
He didn’t meet her gaze, “I ain’t a nice guy. I can’t let you in my room,”  
  
_We don’t have time for this._ She’d had that feeling all day.  
  
“Don’t you get it?” he furthered.  
  
She sighed.  
  
“I know what I’m saying,”  
  
***  
  
His room was empty. He hadn’t completed unpacking his boxes yet. A whole month, and he’d only torn off the packaging tape.  
  
Defenses broken, he was silent a long time before he gave in. He was so tall. He still had all the power to end this, but he gave it back to her. She made her choice. It was his turn to sigh.  
  
“Fine, I ain’t holding back anymore,”  
  
She was enveloped. His coat—she absently unbuttoned one button. He kissed her eyes as well as her mouth.  
  
“I forgot to ask,” he said, “Is this…”  
  
She had shaken her head, “No, I kissed a boy in middle school once,”  
  
He’d laughed, “Boys don’t count,”  
  
He pulled her around the desk and snuck a kiss when her back was against the wall. He then turned his attention to unlocking the window.  
  
“Wait,” she said, not understanding at first, “After everything I did to get here?”  
  
He opened the window one-handed. She saw that it led out to the fire escape. Shinjiro climbed out without answering her, humming at the back of his throat. He was like a kid when he got his way.  
  
“You’re tricking me,” she said, making sure her tone was flat.  
  
“Come on,” he said, helping her out the window.   
  
Her legs had stopped shaking by the time they’d climbed the fire escape to the roof of the dorm.  
  
She looked up at the bowl of stars, the moon. _Make the night last and last and last._  
  
They sat down, shoulder to shoulder. The silence was unsure but slowly grew comfortable.  
  
“This is where I picture you,” said Shinjiro, “Even last night, I couldn’t go to sleep. I climbed up here and kept imagining you’d know and come find me,”  
  
Shinjiro had always been more transparent than she had been.  
  
He scratched the back of his head, “Don’t get me wrong. I’d still love to sleep with you. But even a screw-up knows when something is--”  
  
He turned his head away, away from her and the word, but he said it, “—precious,”  
  
She laughed, “I was going crazy. I didn’t know what else to do,”  
  
She looked at him and saw the change in his expression. He noticed her staring. His mouth twitched.  
  
“Happiness is awful, don’t you think?” he said. She could feel a barrette coming loose from her hair and he quickly removed it, spoke as he removed the rest of them, “I mean, just the right amount of happiness is more than any guy could ask for. But when it overflows it’s—. You’re scared of losing everything. You’re scared of screwing it up. You’ve only got yourself to blame. Like right now, I’m talking too much,” He loosened the rest of her hair, just so his hands could play with the length of it. He made sure her jacket cushioned her head as he lay her down. In the back of her mind, for just a moment, she was instinctively thinking, even then, _Horizontal! Danger! Abort! Abort!_  
  
But if kissing a boy on a moonlit rooftop was the worst thing she would do tonight, she would live with herself. She finally relaxed. She enjoyed the things she hadn’t anticipated, like the calluses of his fingers and the things he whispered in her ear. And the fire ache that had been with her all day began to subside.  
  
He kissed her knees last. He asked about the scars on the right one, then about other things, like her favorite books. They wove long, surface conversations, neither of them looking at the other. She wore his coat, hers half-forgotten. Cheap detergent and something that smelled like it burned sweet. He placed one of her barrettes between his teeth as he told her inconsequential things that she remembered word-for-word. He was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. He was the most beautiful boy she had ever met.

 -

_Cold Persephone was so moved that, for the first time in all her months in the underworld, her heart melted._  
  
_“Oh, please, my husband,” she said to Hades, “let Eurydice be reunited with Orpheus,”_

-  
  
When they climbed back down the fire escape, he had her go down first. She still felt his warmth on her lips, her neck. She looked up at him.  
  
To see him there, the look on that face—the dread returned to her stomach in full force. _Why did I look?_  
  
She grabbed onto the cuff of his pant leg.  
  
“Are you okay?” The look she had seen on his face—he hadn’t meant her to see it.  
  
“This is more painful than I expected,”  
  
Maybe it had been presumptuous of her to say, to think he’d understand. But she thought she had seen that look on his face too. She shook her head, not knowing. He finished climbing down the ladder and used his sleeve to wipe at her face.  
  
“How many more of these clichés you want to check off the list?” His laugh was like a soft thunder, her ear now pulled to his chest. She laughed with him, dreading when they had to climb back into that lonely room. He understood it. He rested his head on hers as she hummed some tune that she’d always known.  
  
***  
  
She sat on the white bed and remembered everything, hazily. Pocket watches, smell of death and medicine, the end of the world. It didn’t hurt. She just felt heavy, her eyes, her belly, her legs.  
  
In those last moments, on that last day, she had meant to keep her eyes closed. The whole time. When she heard his footsteps coming up the school stairs, she had turned her gaze away. It was returning a favor; he’d done the same. When he coughed though, trying to catch his breath, that simple sound, she had opened her eyes and looked at him.  
  
It had been the last weekend of September. That’s when she knew; she had stayed up all that night with that secret, waiting for it to pass. The first boy she had ever loved. Still the most beautiful. The bright grey shirt, covered in dust. The quality of his voice, his uneven virtue. She had run and jumped all over his solitude, but it had never been a game.  
  
He was ambling around the neighborhood, the park, looking at the night sky. She kept seeing things, things that weren’t real. Everything about him, especially the way he moved and what he didn’t say, had been a secret joy. She hadn’t expected anything like the life she’d got.

> -  
>    
>  _“I understand,” said Orpheus, “And I am forever grateful,”_
> 
> - 

  
***  
  
She was cold all over now. The impossible breeze. She found the will to drag her heavy body out of bed and back onto the floor, which was checkered now, she realized. It was dusty, too. She absently lifted her foot to inspect the soot on her soles, black, then dragged herself to the window.

  
Hadn’t she seen this imagery somewhere before? Outside it looked like a sparse watercolor painting. A picture book of the Greek myths—these few patches of green represented some generous place that the gods allowed. Heaven, more pliable than the despairing hearts of men, might see fit to provide the Elysian Fields.  
  
She blinked against the brightness, before bracing her hands against the window sill. The wind had stopped—the window was shut. The stillness of the room was deafening. She stood there with her fingers slowly pressing themselves against grooves of wood. She took a deep breath.  
  
She opened the window. The breeze played with her gown and her foot found the black wrought-iron fire escape. Half-way out, the outside world looked less concrete and her heart was beating. She brought her other leg over.  
  
Sweaty hands helped her up the rungs of the first ladder. She could see the brick of the building now. She heard far-off traffic. She smelled grass that had been freshly-mowed that day. Moonlight spilled over her shoulder.  
  
At the second ladder she stopped and tried to remember. There was nothing. She squeezed her fist together and then opened it. It stung, a little. There were four crescent moons fading from her palm.  
  
She climbed up onto an empty roof. She was glad she had prepared herself. She sat down, pulled knees to chest, and faced the moon. A train passed in the distance, gasping like a ghost. Call of the trains, birds, voices from below—the sounds came to her stone-washed and warm. They were vaguely familiar. She sighed, but ended on a contented note.  
  
Heaven was strange.  
  
She sat there for an hour listening, not to words, but to the tone of question and answer. She basked in the sound of their laughter. She missed them all still. Then, the silence of night. Beds received their burdens, late-night televisions, grasshoppers and cicadas.  
  
And the sound of a window rolling up. The sharp wind that blew through her.  
  
The rungs of the ladder echoed with a heavier weight. Somebody joined her on the roof but didn’t see her.  
  
She waited for him to sit down.  
  
Hands in his pockets, slight recovering limp, he just stood on the roof a moment. He was looking at the moon.  
  
“I’m afraid if I look back at you, you’ll disappear,” he said.  
  
She stood up suddenly.  
  
“What?”  
  
She tried to speak, but realized all she had was a dreamy logic. She could feel the emptiness in her stomach, the cold blowing through her thin white gown. The world had been growing steadily more real.  
  
“Orpheus,” he said, and left it at that. She took a step forward, remembered what he had said about looking at her, and staggered.  
  
She couldn’t think of anything to say except, “What day is it?”  
  
“March 5th, 2011,” he laughed, swiping the hat off his head in a gesture that betrayed his real feelings.  
  
She took a step closer, remembering her old courage. She crouched behind him, her face hidden against his shoulder blade. She brushed a hand down his side, making soothing sounds, trying to anchor herself to reality through the texture of his blessed ratty coat, “I don’t think I’ll ever fully leave that place,”  
  
His arm stiffened.  
  
“No,” she said, “Don’t worry,”  
  
She crawled onto the perch next to him and he turned his head away. She stroked his hair.  
  
They both watched the second train pass by in the distance. She looked at his knuckles and brought his hand up to kiss them. He was a silent a minute. He turned to her. His expression froze. Slowly, he brought his fingers to her neck, and traced a puckered scar there.  
  
She traced the scar on her neck now, remembered Orpheus’ head still singing as it bobbed down the river Below.  
  
Absently, in the moment that followed, she remembered her grandfather.  
  
Her grandfather had been a stern man. Her father had a little of that sternness too. There was an unspoken rule she learned, even at a young age, that boys don’t cry. The last time she had seen a man cry, she had watched her grandfather weep at her father’s grave.  
  
Shinjiro wept in a strikingly similar way. He wept like it was the only natural response, and he wept silently.  
  
As a child, she had been too afraid to take her grandfather’s hand, but finally she had taken one finger and marveled at the feeling of his tears on her sleeve. He had then done something he had never done before, which was to pull her towards him. Relief had flooded her body; she had made the right choice. She found that after that she always had confidence in her decisions—or at least the courage to be right or wrong. It felt like her only gift to give, and throughout her life she had kept on giving it.  
  
She took Shinjiro’s hand without hesitation.  
  
***

>   
>    
>  _\--the ghost from the earth descends,_  
>  _and views the regions he had view’d before._  
>  _Exploring through th’ Elysian fields he meets_  
>  _his dear Eurydice; with longing arms_  
>  _he clasps her. Here they walk, now side by side,_  
>  _with equal pace; now follows he, and now_  
>  _a little space precedes her: Orpheus there_  
>  _back on Eurydice in safety looks._
> 
>   
>    
>  ***

**Author's Note:**

> Owing, in parts, to Alice Low’s rendition to “Orpheus and Eurydice,” the happy ending of the tale in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the wonderfully melancholy “Chosen” (as performed by Blood Orange) and “I’d Like To Run Around In Your Mind” by Vashti Bunyan. (And a direct line from Diana Wynne Jones’ “Fire and Hemlock”). If you listen or read any of these you will find the lines I stole. ^^ NOTE: The last lines are directly from J.J. Howard’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XI.  
> My interpretation of the FeMC route in Persona 3 Portable is that it is necessarily different from the Male MC’s ending. The story is inherently dark and sad, and I didn’t want to interpret the ending cheaply, but considering that to even get an ending other than the standard Aigis ending you have to play the game twice, I took it as a reward that if you have your lover at the end and that FeMC’s route can be interpreted differently. However, there were consequences, just like in the original tale of Orpheus. So, paying homage to the original game’s dark tone and the romantic nature of “Orpheus and Eurydice,” I brought to life a possible ending to P3P. Possibly I could tweak with it more, but I’ll leave it here with all its imperfections.


End file.
